| 80 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Turns potentially forgettable formula into something strangely diverting.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ellen A. Kim
Schroeder's misstep is trying hard to please his star, whether it be her character's empathetic past or one very fake-looking action climax. His greatest service is keeping her toe-to-toe with her talented co-stars -- and both are the better for it.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
The outline of Murder by Numbers may be familiar, but the filmmakers and Bullock do an expert job of filling in the colors.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself.
|
| 75 |
USA Today
Mike Clark
The result is two or three cuts above genre standard.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The story may be about cold-blooded murder, but Bullock's pulsating performance is about the getting of wisdom.
|
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Though Schroeder makes you squirm more than you want to at the inevitable scenes of the trussed-up female murder victim, he also has the proclivity and the skill to make at least the B-picture half of Murder by Numbers of more than passing interest.
|
| 70 |
The New Yorker
David Denby
Bullock shades what she normally does into something more interesting -- the angriest and sexiest work she's done. [6 May 2002, p. 138]
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
F. X. Feeney
Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.
|
| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
This is the kind of film where the audience has to sort through the sequences, like visiting the green grocer's: liked that bit, can do without those.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
When Bullock is on screen, Murder by Numbers is as far away as a sleepwalker's gaze. But when Schroeder focuses on the teenagers, the film is wide awake, eye-to-eye with adolescent angst and anomie.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Towards the end, Murder By Numbers reverts to form with cheesy clichés, plot twists, and a fair amount of unnecessary action, but that's easily the film's low point.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Chris Fujiwara
For much of its length, the film is plausible, if predictable and ponderous. Its strongest assets are its actors.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
In effect gives you two movies for the price of one. The better one doesn't star Sandra Bullock.
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Isn't a great movie, but it's a perfectly acceptable widget.
|
| 60 |
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Engrossing but psychologically shallow tale.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Even though Bullock engages in a climactic scene of blue-screen peril, she essentially cedes the match to the kids. In this mediocre murder case, their presence is the only thing that's really killer.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Neither the crime nor its detection is especially interesting, and screenwriter Tony Gayton doesn't appear to be aiming for psychological insights.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
But owing no doubt to the requirements of Sandra Bullock, the movie's above-the-line star, executive producer, and worst enemy, this potboiling procedural never stands a chance of disproving its title.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A near miss, a respectable but uninspired thriller that's intelligent and considered in its details, but ultimately weak in its impact.
|
| 50 |
Slate
David Edelstein
Not even the actress' soulfulness can save the generic climax, in which she tussles with the badder bad guy on a collapsing terrace above a crashing surf. As a colleague muttered, "Murder by numbers is right."
|
| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
There is indeed a murder - two of them, in fact - and the movie proceeds strictly by the numbers laid down long ago in some by-the-book Hollywood writing class.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
Doesn't necessarily make Murder by Numbers an awful film; it's certainly watchable, but it never escapes its paint-by-numbers design.
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
The real surprise, given the secondhand material, is that not everything proceeds by rote in Murder by Numbers.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Ultimately, Murder by Numbers has been reduced to a tease, giving us a hint -- mostly through the fine performances of Gosling, who creates a charismatic sociopath, and Pitt, who's character seems genuinely troubled -- of the kind of relevant social drama it might have been.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
In Murder by Numbers, though, even Schroeder can't keep his own boredom from showing.
|
| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
Starts out dark, thrilling and inventive, then, regrettably, becomes sappy, mainstream and mundane.
|
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The shallow-seated problem with Murder by Numbers is that it's serious and doggedly intricate but not much fun.
|
| 40 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Director Barbet Schroeder is too elegant an artist for this material, which veers between routine cop-movie conventions and high-toned malarkey that seems a lot closer to Dungeons & Dragons than to "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
|
| 40 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
A sappy big-screen version of TV's "CSI."
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
There's nothing blatantly wrong with it (except perhaps the red-assed baboon ex machina), but it's 100% shock-free and coasts to a formulaic conclusion.
|
| 40 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
A moralizing thriller so listless that it plays out like a game of mouse and mouse.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Russell Smith
In context, it's utterly, dismayingly typical.
|
| 30 |
New Times (L.A.)
Bill Gallo
Most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions.
|
| 20 |
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
This premise could, just maybe, make for a decent thriller, but everything about Murder by Numbers is so flavorless and rote, so devoid of real suspense and human interest, that you never suspect for a moment that the answers are likely to be engaging.
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